A man was speared twice in the chest by arrows as he tried to save his girlfriend from being raped by a tribesman in the rainforests of Papua New Guinea.

Matthew Scheurich, 28, pulled the barbs from his chest and almost bled to death as he and his girlfriend fled for their lives through the thick jungle.

He remains in hospital in Cairns, Australia, after his wounds became infected as the couple made their escape from the tropical island nation.

The attack happened after a tribesman in a remote village in western Papua New Guinea took a shine to Mr Scheurich’s French girlfriend and decided he wanted to marry her.

Mr Scheurich stepped in to protect the woman, but the tribesman retaliated by spearing him with arrows and hitting him in the head with a rock.

His survival has been dubbed a ‘miracle’ after the barbs narrowly missed his vital organs and he lost litres of blood.

Mr Scheurich’s girlfriend endured a sexual assault and was also bitten, cut, scratched and badly bruised in the fracas.

The couple were only rescued after she set off their emergency locator beacon to raise the alarm, the New Zealand Herald reported.

Mr Scheurich, a graphic designer from Waikato, New Zealand, who now lives in Melbourne, Australia, was in Papua New Guinea visiting his anthropologist girlfriend.

She was there to study the Febi tribe from the North Fly district as part of her research for her doctorate thesis, when one of the tribesman decided he wanted her.

After the attack, the pair managed to escape to the nearby town of Suabi where they were looked after by a local church before the missionary air service evacuated them to Kiunga, a coastal town, for medical treatment.

Dr Josette Docherty, an Australian doctor working there, told the New Zealand Herald Mr Scheurich was prone on a stretcher, in agony and ‘deathly pale’ when she first saw him.

One arrow had penetrated his ribcage and the wall of his stomach, and stopped just short of his aorta, the body’s largest and most vital artery; while the other had split a less vital artery.

X-rays showed his chest was half-filled with blood.

Dr Docherty gave Mr Scheurich an urgent blood transfusion – including half a litre from her own partner, medical volunteer Allan Mason – but he needed urgent surgery to survive.

After a fraught night in the 25-bed ward, which had only one nurse on duty, Mr Scheurich and his girlfriend flew to the capital, Port Moresby, and then to Cairns Base Hospital, Australia, last Tuesday.

Mr Scheurich spent a week on the ward in Cairns recovering from his injuries before being discharged and returning to Melbourne.

Mr Scheurich and his girlfriend have since refused interviews. However, speaking from New Zealand, Mr Scheurich’s uncle, Tony Scheurich, told the Cairns Post his family were overjoyed his ‘hardy’ nephew survived the ordeal.

‘He’s a gregarious guy,’ he said.

‘He’s quite happy to just rock up and have a chat to someone. He’s a very easygoing fellow.’

But a spokesman for Queensland Health yesterday told the Cairns post Mr Scheurich had been readmitted to Cairns base hospital with an infection to his wounds.